WE’RE NOT SURE WHAT’S MORE SCARY – IBM’S AI TECH OR MORGAN…

For their new film, Morgan, an AI horror/thriller, 20th Century Fox approached the team behind IBM Watson

For their new film, Morgan, an AI horror/thriller, 20th Century Fox approached the team behind IBM Watson and asked them whether it would be possible for Watson to analyse the film and create a trailer. This is the result:

IT’S PRETTY GOOD. OR IS IT…

Although the final trailer feels polished and, frankly, pretty creepy, the final cut was actually produced by a human colleague of Watson. Having said this, Watson was able to spin out a 6-minute video composition of audio and video.

It was able to identify key parts of the movie and pull those out for the trailer. For example, it would recognise scenes with increased tension, as well as perceive different character emotions. The resulting footage was the classic trailer-teasing images we have come to expect.

However, Watson was unable to coherently draw together a story. Although we are unable to see Watson’s original work, we get the sense that at this time Watson is more of a diligent researcher, rather than a producer of trailers.

Still, it normally takes between 10 and 30 days to make a trailer – Watson reduced the process to just 24 hours.

COLLIDER THOUGHTS

From our perspective, 20th Century Fox have been smart by using IBM Watson. By taking a story about Artificial Intelligence and then using that same technology to help make the trailer, 20th Century Fox has made the movie incredibly relevant, and helped drive consumer conversation about AI (and by extension, the film).

Many of the YouTube comments point to the irony of an AI project creating a horror film about AI gone wrong. From a marketing perspective, that’s no bad thing. It only adds to the success of the campaign.

Words by Karel Kumar

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